Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J), the most senior Hispanic in the U.S. Congress, issued the following statement in reaction to the Trump Administration’s immigration proposal, which would end the system of family reunification as we know it, end the diversity lottery program, and spend $25 billion on a “trust fund” for a border wall and border security:

“Let’s be clear: this plan is designed to leverage the future of Dreamers to ram through a massive, cruel, and family-punishing overhaul of our current legal immigration system. If the President is serious about giving a path to citizenship to 1.8 million Dreamers, he’ll go back to the drawing board over the weekend because it’s clear he is holding these young immigrants hostage in exchange for his extreme anti-immigrant agenda.

“This proposal is not a real compromise but rather a compromise between the far right and alt-right. Unfortunately, the President and Republicans in Congress seem more interested in deporting Dreamers than they are about coming up with a common sense solution.”

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